Second Employee Alleges Chase Bank Surveyed Staff's LGBT Loyalty

A second source has confirmed that JP Morgan Chase has asked each of its employees whether they are “an ally of the LGBT community,” which employees have taken as a veiled threat.

Each year JP Morgan Chase sends its employees a survey asking questions related to management and other non-controversial issues. A longtime Chase employee told Professor Robert George of Princeton that the survey this year included the following questions for the first time:

Are you:

1) A person with disabilities;

2) A person with children with disabilities;

3) A person with a spouse/domestic partner with disabilities;

4) A member of the LGBT community.

5) An ally of the LGBT community, but not personally identifying as LGBT.

This employee was alarmed to receive the final question. If he answered no, he feared, he would be opened up to criticism that may affect his employment. Only a few months ago Brendan Eich was hounded out of the CEO role at Mozilla for not supporting LGBT marriage.

The employee told Professor George he fears for his job:

This survey wasn’t anonymous. You had to enter your employee ID. With the way things are going and the fact that LGBT rights are being viewed as pretty much tantamount to the civil rights movement of the mid 50s to late 60s, not selecting that option is essentially saying “I’m not an ally of civil rights;” which is a vague way to say “I’m a bigot.” The worry among many of us is that those who didn’t select that poorly placed, irrelevant option will be placed on the “you can fire these people first” list.

After posting the item on the law blog Mirror of Justice, Professor George received skeptical emails and Facebook postings, so he came back to Mirror of Justice with a second source.

This source told him, “I just wanted to confirm the Chase employee survey. It did have the last two options about being an LBGT ally. I have worked for Chase for [a number of] years and was blown away by this question. I have no idea what they were thinking when they asked that. If this is posted, please spare my identity.”